


Outside the Ouroboros

by sisternyxalia13



Series: Outside the Ouroboros [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-09 17:12:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15272322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisternyxalia13/pseuds/sisternyxalia13
Summary: The Goethe family has lived in the mountains for ages. They are old money--and their patriarch, Garon, is an unfortunate man. He has lost many children and many wives. His misfortune isn't contained to himself: With each child he's lost, his eldest son Xander has lost a sibling, and with each wife the boy has lost a mother. But now the family seems stable: Garon has a wife and four children... But things are about to take a turn for the worst. Blood curses don't just die out, and Garon's son Leo is about to find out just how awful they can be. There are worse things lurking in the shadows than his father's rivalry with his crush's family--or that his crush just happens to be male, or that soon his gap-year will be over and he'll be going into college and having to pick a career. No. There are worse things than complicated family matters.





	1. Early Losses

It rains.

The tears of the sky mimic the tears of man on the faces of those that have long forgotten how to cry.

There is something grim about being able to recognise the scene in front of them--a coffin draped with lilies on a stand with fine linen. A name engraved onto a gold placard on the side. The names are different each time, but always illegible at a distance. They blur together with older memories to create an amalgamation of loss.

They are differentiated better on the mausoleum.

Xander keeps his gaze low. He did not have great hopes for this stepmother.

She had been vibrant, yes, but so had his own mother. So had Lydian also been. Their children as well.

He felt the sting of loss.

Every time their number increased, they seemed to lose all but one in the resulting aftermath. Even at the tender age of nine, Xander felt responsibility on his shoulders. The weight of his own life and the life of his little sister. What was more, he felt the weight of the little brother now in the hospital just as heavy. He was, Xander felt, more fragile than all of them--and why shouldn’t he be? The boy was just a week old, maybe a little more. Part of him expected his brother to die, and then they would have to get another coffin and have another funeral and slot him in with his mother.

Rain soaked his hair as he held the umbrella over his little sister so that her little body wouldn’t catch chill from the rain. Her little life, he thought, was more fragile and important than his own.

His eyes, tired already, skimmed the names carved into the grey stone not far from them. He wasn’t listening to the service. He was reading their names over and over again.

 

KATERINA GOETHE

ALEXEI GOETHE

CHRISTABEL GOETHE

 

Hurt welled into him. He didn’t have words for the raw, hot pain he felt in reading those names. Names that should still have been there and alive. If they were alive he knew that he wouldn’t be standing here today… He’d be happy, at home, with a little brother and a little sister and father would smile more!

Xander felt Camilla’s fingers curl tight into his coat and he glanced down at her. She wasn’t crying like he expected her to. Xander always heard, in school, that girls were little cry-babies and that they weren’t strong at all… But Xander knew otherwise. He didn’t think he ever saw Camilla cry since she was a baby (not that he remembered her being a baby very well). And she was being very strong right now. Upon hearing about their stepmother’s death, she loudly declared that _she_ would take care of their baby-brother and be his mommy instead. It had been cute.

But now nothing was cute. It was cold and raining and father’s face was… hard. Difficult to read. Xander wondered if Father would ever smile again. He didn’t think he would.

The eldest child tried to distract himself from the scene at hand--He was tired, didn’t want to focus hard on the coffin in front of him or the rain soaking into his suit or drenching his hair.

His eyes moved from the coffin to the next few names:

LYDIAN GOETHE-WOLFF

TRISTIAN GOETHE-WOLFF

NICOLAS GOETHE-WOLFF

 

He didn’t understand why his step-mother or half-brothers had names like that. Mother didn’t and neither did his other two siblings.

Perhaps she was just so much of a Wolff that getting married to his father didn’t make it go away. And then her children were also little wolves. Lydian… What he remembered of her, anyway, had been very wolfish.

No.

Wolves were better mothers than she was.

No wolf would hurt Camilla the way Lydian hurt her.

At least, that’s what he heard their nanny say. No animal would have treated Camilla the way Lydian did. Xander was still too young to understand all of it. He knew that she had hurt Tristian and Nicolas but… He didn’t know all of it. Couldn’t know all of it. There were some things that he was just too small, too abstracted to understand. He was told she was awful, so he believed she was awful.

Xander took a glance back at the coffin through the rain. He lingered on it before his eyes went back to the stone. More names, names that were closer to him. More familiar. They had, at least, gotten to grow a little before they too were cut out like weeds.

 

CHLOE GOETHE

XAVIER GOETHE

LIAM GOETHE

 

Younger siblings, now joined with their mother:

NARCISSA GOETHE

 

_They won’t be lonely. It’s full in there. She’ll be with Liam and Chloe and Xavier. She’ll get to meet Mother and Christabel and Alexei. She’ll even get to meet Nicolas and Tristian and maybe Lydian won’t be mean to her. That would be nice. Maybe Miss Lydian is gentler now, too. And maybe little brother won’t have to go there now. Maybe it’s enough._

Part of him didn’t even want to hope that his new little brother would live. He was too little. Too weak, or so he heard the doctors say. That little Leo was too small and tender and _strange._ But Xander did not know what was strange about him. All babies were small and tender and weak. Even if, when he saw the boy, he was pretty and pale and almost absurdly tiny. But babies were meant to be that way, weren’t they?

They were, after all, babies. There weren’t a lot of traits you could assign to a baby other than the ones above.

“Xander.”

The young blond jerked his head up, suddenly attentive. Father’s voice was always commanding, could always pull Xander from his thoughts. At first he was worried he would be scolded, but instead, his father placed a hand at his back and adjusted the umbrella so that it covered himself and Camilla.

“Be careful, you may catch a chill.”

Father said nothing after, but left the boy to his silence. Rain had already soaked through the boy’s clothes, he was already shivering, but it was nothing next to the coolness inside him.


	2. Doubts

-LEO-

He put pen to paper.

_I covet the bow of your mouth_

_Though it is always curved against me_  

He tapped the page with his pen, looked at the line beneath those words littered with ink.

A sonnet, Leo knew, could be formatted in many ways. He was hardly a poet--prose was more his forte, more familiar to his tongue and hand to put to paper than the twist and play of words in rhythm. Sure, there was a flow to his literature, but he sounded more like Poe than Shakespeare.

Closing his eyes, he tapped the pen against his cheek.

_I covet the bow of your mouth_

_Though it is always curved against me_

 

_And I find your rashness so uncouth_

The blond’s mouth twisted up with annoyance. The blank line mocked him.

“What rhymes with ‘me?’”

The? Thee? See? Tree?

Leo exhaled through his nose. His pen found the next line.

_I covet the bow of your mouth_

_Though it is always curved against me_

_And I find your rashness so uncouth_

_Your passions burn hot and scalding_

No.

He struck through the line. It didn’t even rhyme, and it wasn’t even the proper scheme.

Most sonnets, Leo had learned, were meant to be 14 lines long. Commonly they had a pretty simple pattern-- ABBAABBA for the first eight lines. Leo, arrogant to the last, was sure he could do it,  but finding the words that fit to his mood were difficult. After all, it’s more acceptable to write poetry to your unprofessed love than to write a short piece of prose professing your love--then it just sounds like elaborate friend-fiction. Which was… Not what Leo wanted. They weren’t even really friends by the traditional definition. More like rivals, or something of that nature.

Running a hand through his hair, he made the effort again.

_I covet the bow of your mouth_

_Though it is always curved against me_

~~_And I find your rashness so uncouth_ ~~

~~_Your passions burn hot and scalding_ ~~

He struck through the last two lines and shook his head. Maybe he would try a different format for a sonnet. He couldn’t seem to catch the ABBAABBA scheme for the first eight lines. So then something else.

Leo pressed the tip of his pen to his lips.

“What was the Shakespearean scheme again?”

Skimming his eyes to the other page, Leo lingered on his notes.

His tidy scrawl read:

“16 lines-- 3 quatrains and 1 couplet

ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG Scheme

Iambic Pentameter?”

Leo was not a student of poetry, was not a student of the school of lyrics that he was trying to make himself out to be. Frustrated, he jabbed the pen into his paper and turned his head to peer through the open curtains at the sunlight outside. He and the sun were… not on friendly terms. They agreed to at least be pleasant to one-another when there were a blanket of clouds in the way. Still, he couldn’t find it in himself to hate cheery sunlight when he couldn’t even write out the absurd feelings in his chest. Gods, he’d never felt so _light_ before. It almost gave him a headache.

Or maybe he was catching a late-summer cold. He hoped not.

_You can’t woo your childhood rival with a cold that makes you sound like you’ve just won the prize for being the most pompous person in the room._

He knew he could just… copy something from a book. He could find something from Keats if he really wanted--though Leo found that Keats’ letters were more romantic in the wooing sense than his actual poetry-- but… He wanted this to have a personal touch. If he was going to be obnoxious about it, he was going to do so with a good deal of flair.

_And words are really all you have to offer. You aren’t quite like Xander--sure, he’s built but you have a bit more brains. You can write. You’ve been published!_

Leo chastised himself.

He’d been published in their high-school literary magazine. Hardly a feat worth noting to anyone outside of his family or close circle of friends. As far as he was aware, Xander and Camilla were the only ones that had read the thing in full. One day, perhaps, the piece would be rewritten and published somewhere where people outside of his little circle would read it.

Leo’s grip on his pen tightened. He wondered if _he_ read it.

Sure, it wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t much of anything but an imitation of an author long since dead, but it would matter if _he_ read it. Even if he wasn’t much of a reader. Then maybe--

“I am much more _Poe_ than a _poet_ ,” Leo reiterated, biting his lip to again look at his work.

_I covet the bow of your mouth_

_Though it is always curved against me_

Leo lingered on these lines again.

_Just date me already so we can get this over with_

No.

Despite those being his actual feelings, he wanted to _impress._ Wanted to _woo._ He also had to admit he had a flair for the dramatic.

Letting out a self-derisive snort, Leo tore the page from his journal.

“Best to start over.”

\--

_I covet the bow of your mouth_

Leo had reduced himself down to one line. He thought about it, how he could work with it. He knew they had conflicted in the past, but… Well, _he_ was all that Leo could write about anymore. His thoughts circled themselves when he tried to write anything down. How could he possibly edit his own literature if he couldn’t so much as concentrate on those printed words?

His head wandered and he wondered what it would be like to have the other’s mouth on his and to just have that soft, careful contact. That maybe one day he would fill the other side of his bed and Leo wouldn’t feel so alone. That maybe he would understand Leo in a way that no one else did. That he would sympathise with his situation a little, that maybe he could be loved without condition. The idea both elated and deflated Leo.

Because there were, of course, caveats to owning those things.

Leo knew his father would never agree.

If Father knew, he would make Leo lose all status and stature and what would he have?

A first rate education at a private school and nothing to show for it but a diploma and a story in its literary magazine (Not that Father much cared for his accomplishments anyway, those meant little to him because Leo was the _second son,_ a disappointment meant to fill a role and nothing more. In his eyes, Leo would be losing nothing because Leo was almost at the bottom as it was).

And what if he came out to his older brother?

“Xander, I’m in love with the Hoshidan boy next door,” Leo muttered to himself, feeling a frown crawl over his lips.

Xander, while a good-enough substitute parent, could be unpredictable in his reactions. That by-itself was rather dangerous. Leo knew he didn’t _hate_ the Hoshidans next door but he didn’t _like_ them either. What Leo didn’t know was if Xander shared their father’s own medieval ideas on how the world should work or if he had his own ideas. He’d never asked Xander’s opinion, and discussing his own ideas at the table was… discouraged. It was either you take what Father gave you or nothing at all.

Father was predictable. Leo knew what he thought. Xander was not predictable, he didn’t have a clue what Xander believed, and that was dangerous.

The young blond exhaled.

And still, Leo wondered if the other would hate him if he came out, too. If he wrote this sonnet out in full and mailed it to him. If he handed it to him and ran, and then he came back and told Leo to shove it. What if he _outed_ Leo. Fear gripped him like a vice and he jabbed the pen into his paper. The airy feeling from before had left him, and now it was ice. He was ice. Cold and shivering. He hated it.

Sometimes he didn’t feel like he even had a _future._ Some days he felt like this time in his life was just a transition into a swift and oncoming death--Sure, Leo was full of a haughty self-confidence but--

He pressed his thumb into the top of his fountain pen and shuddered.

Everything on the inside of his home life, inside himself… It was all fragile. A glass menagerie. A delicate balance of smoke and mirrors that might fracture if someone saw past the illusion for longer than a minute. Leo swallowed.

He looked to the sonnet.

_I covet the bow of your mouth_

_And you set my heart aflame_

_Some might call your passion uncouth_

_But without it, you would not be the same_

Leo exhaled.

That felt… More final. More solid. Less…  well, less. The first portion had felt critical. Biting. That was not how he intended to come off. Leo was well aware of his own nature. Harsh sometimes. That wasn’t how he wanted to be with… No. He didn’t want it to be tainted with rivalry. They had had their conflicts in the past--Leo had once called him a boorish moron who couldn’t count even if he had someone do it for him. He’d even once asked him if he knew how to read. That was… cruel. This sonnet, this abject and gaudy admittance of love wasn’t meant to be harsh. Leo never wanted to be hard or cruel to him ever again.

He put pen to paper again.

_There are no words quite so apt_

_No sound or trait, no matter how I strive_

_To describe how your very name keeps me rapt_

_Or how a dead heart it does revive_

Good.

Better.

Maybe he was getting the hang of this.

It certainly wasn’t fiction entirely.

Leo was desperate for some way to alleviate the loneliness that came with being the middle child. The desperate, abstract hurt that came from just existing in his brother’s shadow. There were a thousand-and-one things for Leo to be thinking about now but he didn’t want to think of any of them. He just wanted someone to be there and hold his hand when it was difficult. He wanted someone to be able to tell him it would be alright. For someone to love him without limits.

That second stanza felt more alive to him, felt more natural. It made him wonder what exactly made him fall in love. Sure, they had been rivals for a long time but--

A violent cough ripped through Leo. Its onset was sudden and fierce and, quite frankly, it frightened him. The force shriveled his lungs and his exhalations came out ragged and hurt. Oh that…

That sounded bad.

Leo refocused, inhaled deeply, and then exhaled again. It came out as a wheeze, a thin sound that lightened as he took in air. The young man swallowed his nerves. He would finish his sonnet, see if it happened again.

\--

Another discarded page. He rewrote the lines, moved the second stanza to the third. Leo had coughed more times since then, felt a chill descend on his body. He was, again, unsure if it was a summer cold or his body reacting to anxiety--sometimes it did things that were out of the scope of his control. Once he had worked himself up over a project that he’d been unable to keep food down for a week, at least. It was an unpleasant memory in Leo’s head… One he desperately shoved into the back of his mind.

He looked at his sonnet once more.

_I covet the bow of your mouth_

_And you set my heart aflame_

_Some might call your passion uncouth_

_But without it, you would not be the same_

He swallowed.

He had intentionally left a gap between this and the now third stanza. How to describe what he loved about him.

Leo loved how direct he was. How he spoke his mind. How unafraid of the world he seemed. And yet, much like any guarded treasure, Leo knew there was something softer. Perhaps that should be the focus…? Yes. That.

Leo exhaled.

_Your words strike like an arrow_

_They pierce me through-and-through_

_They’ve hit me on a part so narrow_

_And made me love you_

“No. Absolutely not.”

Leo struck the words out.

“Maybe I shouldn’t try to use so many archery puns. Maybe.”

No.

He liked the archery puns. They fit, somehow. But they also hindered his ability to write.

_Your words strike out from their sheath_

_They run me through-and-through_

_Yet somehow I know, underneath_

_There’s something softer that’s more true_

Leo liked this better.

That’s how it felt. Leo knew what it was like to be cutting with words… or fists, really. Hiding behind a mask that he had to mold to himself. He wondered if the other’s father was like his own: restrictive, unyielding. Maybe he was. Leo knew that he had an older brother--Ryoma. Xander had met him and dealt with him before. They weren’t rivals, per-se, but they weren’t friendly either. Leo almost wished they’d become friends, then it would make things less difficult for him.

He turned the page.

_I covet the bow of your mouth._

~~_And_ ~~ _You set my heart aflame._

_I know some_ ~~_might_ ~~ _call your passion uncouth,_

_But without it  you would not be the same._

 

_Your words_ ~~_strike_ ~~ _have struck me from their sheath_

_They run me through-and-through_

_Yet somehow I know, that underneath_

_There is something soft_ ~~_er inside_ ~~ _that rings more true._

 

_But still, no matter how I try_

_I find there are no words so apt_

~~_That I have no trait, no matter how I strive_ ~~

_No vocabulary_ ~~_I can_ ~~ _to belie_

_Or describe how your very name keeps me rapt_

~~_Or how my dead heart it does revive_ ~~

 

_And so here I lay my heart bare for you to see_

~~_My_ ~~ _To you,_ _~~the passionate and wild~~ _ _my beloved Takumi_

 

Setting down his pen, Leo turned his head. They were not far from their neighbors, the Matsuos. They were, as father called them, “nouveau riche.” Leo saw nothing wrong with how the expressed themselves. They were from the Hoshidan side of the continent--the father, apparently, ran a very successful business, though Leo couldn’t remember what it was for the life of him. He could almost see into their back garden from here.

There was something like shouting from what he assumed was the pool. Probably having company--they always seemed to have company. Leo took a glance out the back window, with hopes that he might catch sight of-- His eyes went back to the sonnet. His face burnt red.

He couldn’t send this, could he?

No.

He couldn’t.

He could still… copy it down. Maybe send it out for publication, omit the last two lines. Call it a Sonnet Incomplete For Unrequited Love. Maybe that.

Leo hesitated for a moment, and then was seized with a frustration. He would never know, and it would always be unrequited if he never _sent_ the damned thing. Maybe Takumi would just be so thick-headed about it that he wouldn’t pick up on any of it at all. Wasn’t that why he’d tutored him in secondary school anyway?

He copied the sonnet down in full, written in his own, delicate hand. Folded it into thirds. Slipped it into an envelope. He tried not to think about what he was doing, tried not to think about how he scrawled Takumi’s name in the most careful of ways. And then his eyes lingered on the letter. He would just… have to wait until he had the courage to pick it up and take it to him. That was all. Just put his seal on it and… That was it. That was it. He could think about it for a while.

Until his heart was strong enough that he could...

 

-TAKUMI-

The young man leaned up against the edge of the pool, his skin soaking up the heat from the sun-baked tiles.

“HEY TAKUMI! WATCH THIS!”

Despite the fact that Takumi knew what it was going to be, he turned his head anyway.

There were the wet, heavy footfalls of Hinata making a rush at the edge of the pool.

Raising both eyebrows, Takumi felt a sort of half-boredness cross him, “Hey, don’t run-- if you trip and hurt yourself, it’s your fault, Hinata.”

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Sure enough, as Hinata’s dripping feet met the tiles, they lost traction and the brunette tumbled forward. His stomach made contact with the concrete and his head tipped forward into the water.

Takumi felt his jaw clench and his shoulders tense up. That looked like it hurt. Hinata came up coughing, and then laughing, alternating between the two.

“Hey, hey, don’t--Hinata, don’t laugh! Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine! That was pretty wild, huh!”

“Uh… If you say so.”

Takumi’s eyes roamed around the rest of the patio. Oboro was lounging heavily on one of the poolside chairs, not really intent on joining them in the water. She lifted her head, peering over her sunglasses at Hinata and Takumi.

“Are you giving yourself brain damage again, Hinata?”

“Nah, I’ve already got brain damage, Oboro! More like gut damage!”

“... If we end up having to take you to the hospital again, Takumi’s driving.”

Takumi’s head whipped toward Oboro, “Hey, why me?”

“Because we all know you have a lead foot.”

“Very funny, Oboro.”

Takumi rolled his eyes and turned his head back to look over the back garden, and then to the house he could see just over the garden wall. It was so old and estately that it was almost obnoxious.

_Nohrians really know how to build them. God it’s so massive. Who even needs a building that tall?_

His eyes strayed over the upper windows of the manor, noting that most of them were open but one was covered. That had to be Leo’s room. That pompous guy was always shying away from the sun and being an absolute tit about it.

While they had been in secondary school together, Leo had tutored him in their language classes and had tried to help him to interpret text and poetry. Some of the text, Takumi recalled, had been difficult to decipher and he hated that. He hated not being able to understand something as simple as words. How could he not? They were just _words!_

What’s more, Takumi never knew what to make of Leo, either. They weren’t exactly enemies, but they weren’t friends either. Since the marriage of his father to his step-mother, Takumi had lived in this house, and that meant being the Goethe’s neighbors.

They weren’t loud people, and they didn’t seem fond of get-togethers or parties. They never seemed to have company over, and if there were… Even when he and Leo graduated out of the same year, Takumi didn’t think he saw anything much like a celebration at all. He hadn’t asked, but he heard his older sister talking to her girlfriend about it. Apparently Leo hadn’t wanted much of a celebration (which honestly didn’t surprise Takumi at all), and their father hadn’t cared enough to try to persuade him otherwise. That’s how it seemed.

Takumi, admittedly, didn’t know enough about their neighbors’ dad to be able to pass a judgement on him. Maybe they were just… private people. Camilla certainly seemed that way. She spent tons of time in their house with Hinoka but Takumi only saw her a handful of times. When she was out-and-about, she was incredibly affectionate in a way he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with--lots of pinching cheeks and half-spoken baby-talk. Ugh. Oh well, though. She was his sister’s girlfriend and he wasn’t about to be rude to her or anything.

He wondered if they were going to get married, Hinoka and Camilla. That might be interesting--there were a lot of questions he’d have about such a union. Would they have a traditional Nohrian wedding or a traditional Hoshidan wedding? He supposed it wouldn’t matter, they were throwing tradition right out the window. Takumi couldn’t fathom what it was like to have someone like Camilla:

Someone who would love him without regard for themselves, unconditionally. Someone who wanted to spend every waking moment with them. It felt almost alien to him.

Sure, he had friends, but it wasn’t quite the same. There was a different kind of intimacy that Takumi had never really experienced. He and Oboro had dated briefly but Takumi hadn’t been very much into it. Oboro wanted someone, he guessed, who was more involved in the relationship and Takumi hadn’t even _been_ in a relationship before. Their fling had been short and simple. There wasn’t much passion in it on his end--it was a crush pursued and he thought that maybe getting together would light the fires of passion or whatever Leo talked about when they were discussing poetry. None of that flowery, passionate stuff all those Romantics wrote about or whatever.

Maybe it was because he saw her more like a close friend and companion than a potential love interest. It was, by his opinion, better to break it off and let her try out other guys. It wasn’t fair to Oboro to just string her along when he wasn’t interested. It had been a mutual curiosity, and when feelings had failed to manifest, he was almost a little disappointed. He almost wanted to be able to love someone like that. He was sure he was capable of it but he just… hadn’t found the right person. That was all. Or maybe he just wasn’t that into romance?

Takumi found his eyes wandering to the curtained window that he was sure belonged to Leo. They’d known each other since they were small, butted heads all the time. His mother joked that Takumi should just get it over with and date him before it was too late, but Takumi didn’t see the humor in it.

_“Maybe you should try and be his friend, Takumi?”_

He could practically hear his mother’s voice telling him to make an attempt to be nice to the guy. But how could you be friends with someone so _insufferable._

Well, clearly, you could be because Hinata was pretty tight with one of _Leo’s_ friends (some weirdo named Odin, and you could always tell when they were hanging out together because Odin was _loud)_. And it wasn’t, maybe, that Leo was insufferable so much as he was a little arrogant. Thought too much of himself. But maybe he had the right to. Leo was pretty smart. Pretty… Just pretty, Takumi guessed. No person had the right to look that pretty, in his personal opinion.

Wait. Wait.

Why was he even _thinking_ about Leo as being _pretty._

His face screwed up and he found someone’s fist meeting with his shoulder with a sharp smack.

“O-OW! OW! HEY!”

“You weren’t listening!”

“You don’t gotta hit me!”

Takumi’s eyes locked with Hinata’s and the brown-haired male grinned at him.

“I mean, you were all contemplative and whatever. But Oboro and I were just gonna go and get some food. Do you wanna come or are you too up in the air?”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you’re off in space somewhere, that’s what. D’you want tacos or not?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. But I’m not gonna come or anything. I just kind-of want to hang out here.”

“You sure, Takumi?”

“Yeah.”

Hinata pulled himself up out of the pool, almost losing his trunks in the process, dripping water all on the tiles. Takumi raised both his eyebrows and then rested himself on his forearms, watching the other’s window still. Part of him felt like he should invite the guy over. Maybe when they weren’t in classes he was less insufferable. Sure, it’d been a while since they’d hung out--well, he hardly considered tutoring and stuff hanging out-- but maybe the kid didn’t have anyone to hang-out _with._ Maybe Leo was lonely up there in his tower.

But if he went over there then there was a chance that Leo’s older brother, or worse, his _dad_ might answer the door. Not that he was scared of them, or anything. It just might be weird, that’s all, for him to go over.

No.

He’d just have to ask him over some other time, maybe. He could ask Camilla to text him, or maybe get Leo’s number from her. Something like that.

Yeah.

Something like that.


	3. Xander

 

The eldest son put pen to paper, tried to put down his thoughts. Shadowed eyes moved to the curtains and the sunlight beyond, unaware that upstairs, his younger brother was seated similarly. Xander inhaled.

Between Xander and Leo there are many things.

Nine years.

Eight siblings

Five brothers.

Three sisters.

Two step-mothers.

One father.

One mother.

Between Xander and Leo there are many things.

Xander counts them, the years, the losses. He knows doing this only opens old wounds. It only encourages him to hurt about these things… But it’s been so long since they all went that sometimes the only thing that comes from it is a twinge of remorse.

Others it is a wave of misery. Missing someone who held your hand and loved you dearly. Someone whose life was cut so short, that ended so suddenly. These moments were less frequent. Part of it was with the swiftness of loss. So many of his siblings did not make it beyond the age of four. He didn’t have the opportunity to know them as people, and his step-mothers…

They were always one way or another. Torrid individuals that he was never really able to grow close to. He was less sad for their loss and more that his younger siblings never knew a loving mother or guiding hand until the present… And even then, he felt, it was too late for most of them. By the time they had a stable hand in their relationship, both he and Camilla were well into their teens. Leo was nearly ten, Elise was almost five when Father married Arete. Of all of them, Xander felt, Elise was perhaps the most adjusted for that reason. Until Arete, none of their mothers and step-mothers had lived, and so Elise was able to have something consistent in her life. She did not have the revolving-door of step-parents that Xander had since his mother passed away, and she did not experience the deaths of previous siblings. 

And sometimes Xander wondered how things might be different.

How he and his siblings might be different if they had more steady hands to raise them. If their mothers had lived…

In truth, Xander knew that his siblings would not exist if his own Mother hadn’t died--he supposed that was the silver-lining of it. But in the process of gaining siblings he had lost more than he’d won. As an adult he knew this. As an adult he accepted this. It was always sad to lose siblings, to lose family, but by this point Xander assumed that they might all live normal, long lives. He had concluded that as long as a sibling made it past the toddler years they would likely survive into later life.

Xander knew he might be happier if he hadn’t experienced loss, he would have his mother in his life, his twin siblings from her. Father might not be so cross. Things might be more lively.

But Camilla would not exist. Leo would not exist. Elise would not exist. And Xander treasured them more than the grief and loss could take from him. He loved them, let his siblings fill the void where other wounds had been carved out.

Xander put pen to paper, and then lifted it again.

Once, before Narcissa had passed away, she told him that writing his thoughts down in a journal might help him.

His thoughts turned to her.

Narcissa, Leo’s mother, wounded in an accident and dead birthing his youngest brother. Narcissa, who had appeared cold and calculating but had tried her best. Narcissa, who could never quite give up the things that were familiar. Narcissa, who could not separate herself from her rustic heritage.

Narcissa, who was Leo’s mother, who he was sure would have loved her son dearly, the only of her children to have made it to adulthood. Leo was much like her--precocious, pragmatic, beautiful and intelligent. Leo… who almost didn’t survive childhood.

Xander put pen to paper, and he wrote.

 

_ June 27th _

 

_ It was a miracle that Narcissa survived the accident, really. A miracle because we all knew she should have died like the rest, but she lived. Father’s concern was with the child she was carrying, and from what I recall, discussion about miscarriages. Father has never been the type to sugarcoat things, I suppose. I had already experienced loss, so why hide this from me as well? _

_ “You may have a new brother soon, Xander… But in light of recent events, he may also die before he is born. That is something I think you should know.” _

_ Those may not have been his exact words, but he said something to that effect.  _

_ I was fully prepared for the same events I had already experienced. The “miracle of life,” so to speak. _

_ One might assume, I suppose, that births are miracles because of the extraordinary odds that must coincide before a person is born. One might also assume that a successful birth in a family that loses much to celebrate that birth even more. I regret to admit that is not quite the case. _

_ I was nine, almost ten. I had already lost two mothers and seven siblings. Death was a constant shadow, it came easily and swiftly upon my house and without any warning. I expected death to swoop in and snatch this baby from us before he even left the womb. _

_ I regret also to admit that I was a touch… out of line while in the hospital. _

_ After all, why was I made to come and look at an infant that might be stillborn? I resented that. _

_ I resented it so much that I refused to even go near the delivery room. I wanted no part in it. Father was, perhaps, more concerned with the health of this child than he was about my behavior… Normally I would not be so easily allowed out of range of his gaze. Father has always had a tight leash on his children. He even permitted Camilla to sit with me as well. She was a demure child, if I recall. She’d been much more energetic when she was smaller, before her mother… Lydian was not a kind mother, that is all. (Perhaps I will write on her later, if the mood strikes me). _

_ So we sat in one of the waiting areas, a good distance from Narcissa’s room. I remember, also, that it was raining, that time dragged on the later it grew. I think, at the time, I wanted nothing more than to be at home. No, that was what I wanted. I’d already read what book I had brought with me, and playing with whatever was available for us in the corner was nothing short of a mockery of what we could do. There was really no reason for us to be here. Father simply must not have wanted us so far from him (after all, it is hard to watch your children if you are in the hospital and your children are at home). I suppose the end of the leash that day extended to the sitting-room and not much more. _

_ It was, perhaps, the first time I experienced absolute boredom. It was the boredom of being a child in a place where there is nothing for you to do but sit on your hands. The type of boredom that drags hours into centuries. And how can we be blamed? With all the tumult surrounding the new child’s birth, how could we not be disenchanted?  _

_ So we watched nurses come and go, watched families come to visit with patients. I remember seeing so many nervous fathers, different from my own. I wondered if other families were like this, too. I wondered if their kids were bored and tired and unexcited as well. _

_ I assume that, at some point, Camilla and I fell asleep, because we woke by Father’s careful movement. We were going to go home. We would come back in the morning to meet my new brother. _

_ My new brother who had survived being born. _

_ I won’t deny that part of me was particularly impressed. That this weak child was meant to die in its mother’s body and did not. _

_ He was born. Alive. _

_ Part of me could not consider it a victory until he made it to at least five. The same part of me was almost skeptical that Camilla would be able to survive much longer, either, and she was just four. She had survived one attempt on her life already. One near-death experience, I supposed, meant that the next one would kill her (though there were no more attempts, Camilla is twenty-four now, I’m glad to say). _

_ And then the next day we were carted back to meet him. _

_ Being the oldest, I was privileged to hold him first. _

_ “This, Xander, is Leo,” Father told me. And then he placed my brother in my arms. _

_ I do not believe I’ve held a child so small or fragile since Leo. _

_ He felt too small for my grasp. He felt too small to be alive, too small to be breathing and here and yet, there he was. A baby with fine hair and pale eyes.  _

_ Despite my best efforts to try and remain distant, to try and hate something that hadn’t been born, I had failed. Like Camilla and all my siblings before, I loved Leo. When Narcissa took him away, he fussed--but that was the nature of Leo as a child. He was quiet most of the time, but fussy and particular. We learned quickly that if he slept that we should make no sound, lest he wake and scream. His mother could make as much noise as she liked--as long as he was with her, he slept sound. _

_ But that… _

_ That did not last long. _

_ Narcissa was gone before Leo had even made it to his first month of life. _

 

Xander paused. It was always harder to think of how to transition these things. He reminded himself that this was a journal, not a published piece. He could write whatever he wanted, transition it however he wanted. Narrative wasn’t exactly his greatest strength but he tried. Made the effort. And journaling had helped him to improve. What to talk about next?

He glanced at the date on the top of his page, and shook his head with a wan smile. That might explain things.

 

_ Funny. Now it is almost nineteen years to the day that Leo was born that I write this.  _

_ Leo is almost nineteen. _

_ I suppose that the miracle of life occurred in that Leo lived, but his mother did not. _

 

Xander frowned.

Did he dare put this part in his journal? Did he dare mention it at all?

He never felt that Narcissa was completely gone from the world. Never felt that she left them behind. She had left them Leo, after all, but there was more to it, wasn’t there? There was always more that wasn’t said. Always more that was left behind. And part of that frightened Xander.

And really, when he tried to parse out the events, the reality of it slipped through his fingers like sand. It all felt absurd and surreal inside his head. Felt as though it didn’t belong, as though the memory was insane and he was mad for even considering it. That he and Leo were the only witnesses, that the memory was water in a strainer in his little brother’s mind. That it was a painting, an etching, a shadow burned into the wall, but unreal. Ethereal. The ghost of fear.

It was impossible, absurd, but what else could it have been? 

Rationale said it was impossible. The part of him that existed in childhood, that lived fantasy and adventure told him it was the truth.

He was older then, on the cusp of adolescence, more involved with Leo’s care. Elise hadn’t even been  _ thought _ of yet… Or else Sophia was pregnant with her. He didn’t remember. Those particular details were fuzzy and he would have to try and lay them out later.

Xander’s face drew up with tension. Drew up because it was so fantastic that Father would never believe it. In the end, Xander even wondered if it was real, if this was something that had happened. But it had to have happened.

None of them spoke of it, but Leo still bore the marks on him today. Sometimes Xander himself had nightmares about it. Nightmares about finding Leo cold and pale and still… But he always opened his eyes in the dreams, and they were the eyes of someone dead.

 

_ So, Narcissa had died. Her funeral was a sad affair. I remember that summer as particularly rainy. It rained on the day of Leo’s birth. It rained when Narcissa died. It rained when we buried her. It rained. _

 

He paused again, lingering with the tip of the pen pressed to the page. Ink spread among its fibers, spidering out like a torrid web. He lifted the pen from the page and considered again what he was about to put down. The memory itself was newer than those of his childhood, but distant in-as-much that it was hazy. Some details eluded him while others were ingrained into his memory, the ghosts of things he didn’t want to believe in.

 

_ Sometimes I wonder if the next events were real. _

_ The details of it slip in and out of my memory. The house was the same as it is now--save for some members. At the time it was Father, and Sophia (who would become Elise’s mother soon enough), myself, Camilla, Leo and our attendants… Though I suppose calling them attendants is a touch insulting. They’re staffers, but they always behaved more like parents than my father did. Sophia tried to mother us but she was prone to illness and her fragile state was very different from the one Narcissa experienced toward the end of her life. So we were left to our own devices and to the hands of our caretakers. _

_ Leo, we all found, could be incredibly difficult. _

_ He was three, perhaps just turning four when he was struck by a sudden and violent illness. _

_ Camilla noticed it first. _

_ Camilla has always given close attention to the needs and details of her siblings’ lives, fulfilling the closest role of a mother as she could (though I worry she lost much of her childhood to that role of caretaker, unfair, really, she deserved a childhood as much as the rest of us), and so it was her eyes that caught it. _

_ Leo, Camilla found, was pale and shivering as though he had chills. It was summer, summer colds were common, but in older children. Leo hadn’t even seen a preschool before contracting an illness. (Leo and preschool is an entirely different story, he was famously difficult among staff--though perhaps that is a more cheery story for another time, because more often than not, the result was humorous). Naturally, I grew worried. I myself was just entering adolescence but previous loss had told me to be cautious. _

_ I felt both the sting of an inevitable death and the determination to keep it from transpiring. Leo had lived before. He would live again. _

 

Still, the image haunted Xander. Leo, pale, shivering. Irritable and exhausted… Xander still recalled the long shadows under his brother’s eyes, and the way he protested sleep. The way he refused to let himself be moved from bed unless he was asleep when they did. How he would try to struggle from their grasp, how cold he was to the touch. With both arms around his brother’s chest, Xander could feel the rabid and shuddering pulse.

 

_ We convinced Father to take him to the doctor. _

 

He recalled Leo with his head full of curls and his fussing in the car-seat. Leo was often a difficult child if things weren’t just so. He would fuss until he was cooled, though he seldom got his way. Usually he could be distracted with books. In this vein, Xander thought, it amused him, because Leo’s first word had been “no” and his second word had been “book.” That soon grew--Leo was a precocious baby, he picked up words from his siblings and his father and step-mother easily. He learned to read specifically because he seemed to like books more than people.

Leo’s third word, Xander felt, was actually his name--though it came out sounding more like ‘Andrew’ than ‘Xander’. Children, he supposed, had difficulty with the X and R sounds. That did not surprise him.

 

_ We were told that Leo’s symptoms were Anemia. They drew blood, said we had to wait, and moved on. Father, already distracted with other things, went back to work. We were sent home with Leo and told to make sure he was well rested, well fed, and that we watch him. If his illness worsened, we were to take him back. _

 

Xander remembered the anxiety. Remembered being unsure, remembered not knowing if his little brother was going to suddenly sink down and be gone. He didn’t want Leo to be gone. He wanted Leo to live. He lifted his pen from the page, and thought about how to address all of it. How to address what was wrong. What he saw that night… What Leo told him…

How many details was he leaving out? Was his memory so lacking? Should he give more? Should there be more backstory? Like how Narcissa had begged her father to make sure that she was buried a little differently from the other wives. How she asked to be buried face-down in the mausoleum. How she asked that a thorned rose be pressed into her fingers or that her wrists be tied with a length of the stem. That her coffin be made of ash or yew wood and nailed with iron nails. Father had taken only one of those measures, making sure she was buried with her hands and feet bound.

_ “It is a superstition, Xander. She comes from a place where this is the norm, it is expected. The dead are buried this way because her people are afraid they will rise.” _

Xander wondered why father indulged her if it was a silly superstition. He supposed he had no right to know.

His hand trembled as he placed his pen back to the page. He exhaled.

 

_ Leo, even then, insisted that there was nothing wrong with him. He was cranky and tired because he’d been awake playing with a friend. We had servants, yes, but none that stuck in the house at night. None that could be considered Leo’s friends. Gunter was the only one truly available after hours--he lives with us still in the house today-- so naturally, I found this suspicious. Part of me wished to assume that Leo had an imaginary friend. Life here is hardly friendly to a child. We were all bound to our ivory towers and Father has always had strict expectations. That is to say that we aren’t close, I think we siblings are, but… _

 

He was deviating from the conversation at hand.

Maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe he just wasn’t ready to discuss it.

But the memory was vivid to him.

Pale hands pressed against a window. A white face that didn’t belong with the living. Leo sitting upright and holding his arms out and giving a cry of  “Mother!” to the thing on his balcony. His little, pale arms. His shaking little body.

A chill dripped down Xander’s spine. 

 

_ But that is beside the point. _

_ Camilla and I watched Leo for three nights. We were just young--Camilla was nearly ten and I was nearly fourteen--we could not watch him at all hours. Sophia was with Father always (sometimes I wonder if her affection for us was performative, to gain Father’s favor. Other times I imagine that it might have been genuine.). The first night I could not sleep, and woke because I heard a sound outside my window. At the time my room was flush with Leo’s--this was before Elise was born and before Leo acquired so many books that he had to be moved so he might have his own library space-- and so my sleep was… Interrupted. So I went to check on Leo. _

_ I found his window open but my brother sleeping soundly. His pallor was the same but he seemed… Something was wrong with him. _

 

He had once tried to puzzle it out to himself. Something was wrong with the way Leo was laying, or else his face. He was too at ease, maybe. Too relaxed. Leo, even then, was uptight. Always fussing. Always.

So then why…?

 

_ Because I could not quite place what was wrong, I made myself go to bed. I reasoned that because I had already lost more siblings than I wanted to count, then I was simply anxious that Leo might be next. He seemed the same as before. Nothing had changed. _

_ But I suppose that is, in part, what struck me as wrong. It was that absolutely nothing had changed. Leo should have improved. Rest and good food and he should have been alright.  _

_ So then why was he the same as before? _

_ What had we done that failed Leo so strongly? Why was he still so ill? _

 

Xander lingered on the page again. Leo hadn’t improved at all. Leo had been too relaxed. Even now, Leo relaxed is not a Leo that is alright. It is a Leo who is ill because his sleep is too restful, because his body is too tired to generate the stress that he’d held inside him since he was an infant.

 

_ I left Leo to sleep and tried to rest myself. _

_ The next day we were given a return call from the physician. _

_ Anemia. We were to continue as planned, to watch him. They didn’t have a cause, they would have to run more tests, or so I was told.  _

 

Run more tests.

Xander hadn’t been the one on the phone exactly, but as an adult he knew what the things he was told were actually: That they didn’t know, that there was no cause. That they needed to check on more things. That no one knew what was wrong with Leo. Leo didn’t even know what was wrong with Leo.

 

_ Steadily, by degrees, Leo worsened. _

_ After the second night, Leo could not even so much as lift his head or arms to read. _

_ That is the day I learned that doctors don’t make house-calls like they do in books or movies. _

_ We took him in. I don’t remember much of it. _

 

The rush of hospital wheels, Leo fussing--Leo always fussed-- Camilla fussing too, because Leo was unwell. But Leo couldn’t do anything to protest except for whine a little and complain that he was cold and the blood they put in him was too cold, too. Because it was a transfusion, that’s what he needed. He needed blood because it was all leaving him and they didn’t know how. They didn’t know how and he could die. He could have died. Almost did.

The chill in Xander’s spine spread into his veins and left his arm feeling like it was leaden.

Writing was difficult. He didn’t want to press on, didn’t want to remember Leo’s white face or how he begged them to let him go home and sleep in his bed.

Xander pressed the tip of his pen to the page again, feeling his hand shake a little.

He was a man who had seen enough death. Who had read court cases, who worked with murders and assaults and brutal things. And yet here he was, trembling over something that happened ages ago. When Leo was too small, when he was older, when he should have been able to handle it.

“Are you not made of something stronger?” he chided, feeling his shoulders tense unpleasantly.

 

_ “If I don’t go home, I can’t see Mother.” _

 

Those words were ingrained into Xander’s memory.

He knew that Leo wasn’t referring to Sophia. He never referred to her as Mother. Never spoke of her affectionately. He always called her Miss Sophia. Always was polite to a fault with her unless he was being  unruly and unpleasant, unless he was using the favored “no” against her.

 

_ I stayed with Leo overnight. Camilla wished to as well, but… Well, our manners of persuasion worked in-so-far that one of us was allowed… and I am the oldest. Camilla was also in more fragile health than I was (though I was also a child of fragile health as well, but by that time it hardly mattered, I’d grown out of my childhood illnesses), so it fell to me to watch-over Leo during the night. _

_ So, we were left to our own devices. _

_ Leo, with some color back into his face and more life in him than before, did not go straight to sleep. He lingered, sleepless, anxious. Watching the window and blinds. _

_ I tried to speak with him. _

_ The conversation went something like this: _

_ Myself: You should rest, Leo. You’re ill and you won’t be able to go home until you’re better. _

_ Leo: No. I don’t want to sleep. (He might also have said he can’t sleep as well, either way, he wasn’t about to sleep) _

_ Myself: Why not? Do you want something from home? I could call Gunter and have him bring some of your books. _

_ Leo: No. I’m waiting for Mother. _

_ How is one to broach the topic of a dead mother to their younger brother? Particularly one that lived only long enough to bring him into the world before she died. Perhaps I assumed he was dreaming of her, the idea of her. _

_ “If you sleep, you’ll be able to see your mother. She’ll be able to find you wherever you are if you sleep.” _

_ “No, she likes me awake so she can see my eyes and we can talk. She won’t like it if you’re here. And she won’t be able to find me if we’re here. We should go home.” _

_ Needless to say, we did not go home. _

 

But Leo did not sleep until the hours drew late, either. Xander remembered that. Remembered dozing in his seat while Leo twiddled his thumbs. While Leo fussed about for different reasons. While Leo eventually fell asleep and tried to toss in his bed.

 

_ And then something… Something happened. _

_ The memory of it is like mist, like a fog, a nightmarish sort of thing. Terrible, tragic. _

_ I regret to admit that not only did Leo pass into sleep, but so did I. Perhaps, in part, that is what makes this so unnerving. That I was asleep and woke, or-else dreamt the thing entirely. I will never know, for I have never addressed it with Leo, nor do I ever plan to. He so loathes being reminded of his weaknesses. (I know Father pressures him to fit into my mold, but Leo has his own desires and needs and I no more want him nipping at my heels than Leo wants to be trapped in my shadow. I know that he would excel in any field that he pursued, he’s always been precocious and pragmatic). _

_ So, we slept until the early hours of the morning. I am a light sleeper. I always have been. Even as an infant, I am told, that I would not sleep unless all others were still around me. I would stir at the slightest movement. The same is said for then as well, and still now. _

_ And, being a light sleeper, I woke to a sound like someone drumming their fingers on the window. It was a steady, thudding sound that paused for a beat before it would continue. Like a heartbeat. _

_ I thought, perhaps, it might have been a nurse coming to check on my brother before moving on to other patients… This was not the case at all. _

_ The sound came from the window. It stopped and started and I listened with some sort of horrified fascination. I could see nothing on the other side of the drawn shade, no cast shadow from the darkness that might hint at its form. The only logical option would be that a bird had perched itself on the window and wanted inside. _

_ This thought might have lulled me into sleep, if it were not for the voice that next crossed the air. _

_ “Leo.” _

_ The voice that came from the other-side of the window was so familiar to me that I felt myself shiver. I had a vague sense of nostalgia and sadness from listening to it. And at the same time, I felt fear too. Whatever that was, it wanted my brother. In my fear, I sat frozen. _

_ And she called again, “Leo.” _

_ And this time, my brother stirred… Somewhat. _

_ When he opened his eyes, they were glazed and sleepy and unaware of the night around him. He sat up, but only just enough that he could turn his head to try and catch the sound again. _

_ And she spoke, again, “Leo.” _

_ And I felt fear curl up in my stomach. _

_ Leo exhaled a yawn, and then said, “Mother. I’m here, Mother.” _

_ Those words will be forever ingrained in my memory. Forever. Mother. Leo’s mother. _

_ I knew the voice was familiar, but I could scarcely remember what Narcissa sounded like. I should have--she was present in my life longer than my own mother, and longer than Lydian. Time, I suppose, makes you forget. _

_ But in remembering I felt pain and fear. I had to see. I had to know. So I crossed the room, my brother at my heels--after all, it isn’t hard to be faster than a boy that sleepwalks. _

_ In my terrible trepidation, I lifted the curtains and…  _

 

Xander had to stop, had to make his hand stop shaking, his handwriting growing more and more skewed as he went.

Xander felt like this horrible dream was just too unreal for it to be possible, and yet… Here he was, recounting the events, remembering the surreality of it all. He didn’t like that there was no rational explanation aside from the unreal. That there was nothing in heaven and earth that could explain what happened, save a dream… And Xander recalled no other dream like this. Even fading nightmares did not have the same lasting terror as this.

The fear of death, fear of losing his brother, that his mother would drag him into the grave.

And still her face was in his mind. Wan, livid white. Her eyes had become black pits without a soul, her mouth too pale for him to see easily in the dark. She clung to the window like a horrible insect, her head tilting at him.

Xander remembered his hand going slack at the sight, watching the shade drop in front of her face as it went from her saccharine smile to shock.

 

_ She was there. _

_ His mother was there. _

_ I seized Leo and dragged him back to his bed, held onto him and refused to let go. _

_ The tapping continued, the voice more insistent, that Leo let her in. My grip on Leo was iron, locked tight around him and as the minutes inched further, she grew more desperate. More rabid in her words. _

_ As long as she addressed Leo, I found that I could ignore her and hold him. _

_ And then she addressed me. _

_ “Xander. Let me in, Xander. You’ve grown up strong, and you’ve protected my precious blood, but I need him now. I need him to come away with me. Let me in, Xander. Leo, let me in. Let me in.” _

_ My sleepwalking brother turned his head and pushed it into my shoulder, and he shivered. Or perhaps it was me. Perhaps I was shaking. _

_ I said nothing, keeping my arms firmly around Leo’s body. He was unaware, distant, head tilting occasionally to the side, sometimes trying to escape my grip but otherwise remaining largely lethargic. I loathed this, as it was not him, it was not Leo. He often fussed about contact in the past, often whined if we touched his hair or moved a curl out of place, if we hugged him without warning… I hated that he seemed to sleep through this, that he was unaware because I too wished I was unaware. But I hated as well that he was unable to wake. That whatever this image of my step-mother was, that it was keeping some part of my brother hostage. _

_ I don’t know when, but some-time in the torturous hours of darkness, the tapping stopped. Her insistence ended. Leo settled into sleep and I too lapsed until the sun rose and the curtains were lifted to splash light on our faces. _

_ Leo looked… Better, but not his best. _

_ Color was in his face but he was still irritable, still sleepy, and annoyed because someone had mussed his curls in the night. _

_ I do not think I ever enjoyed hearing him complain more. It meant he was alive-- _

 

“Xander.”

The eldest boy nearly mussed his word, pressing the tip of his pen into the paper. Ink bled into it before he drew it back. Camilla was leaning in the doorway, her hand laying flat against the frame.

Straightening himself up, Xander closed his journal, his thoughts askew.

“Yes, Camilla? Is something amiss?”

“Amiss? No, no. Nothing amiss. It’s only that you’ve been holed up here all evening… You look lost in thought.”

Xander bit back his words, working to put himself on track again, and he shook his head, “A touch reminiscent. That is all.”

“Anything important?”

“No. Nothing important.”

The image of Narcissa at the window, of Leo so empty and toneless, cold, shivering, did not leave him.

“Oh, good. Then I suppose you won’t mind if I drag you out of your reminiscing for tea. You cannot spend all your time up in your study, Xander. We hardly see you these days.”

“Law is a grueling business, Camilla. It does not rest.”

“Nor do you, Xander. Now come, Elise has been asking after you  _ all day.” _

Exhaling, Xander pulled himself from his seat, “I suppose an afternoon tea won’t halt all business for the day.”

“It won’t.”

“Did you manage to convince Leo?”

“Unfortunately, no. He said he was working on a piece for publication. Almost finished.”

“We’ll have to ask him to read it when it’s finished.”

“Perhaps, but you know how relentlessly private he is with his work.”

“... He is, isn’t he? Perhaps, just once, he’ll let us read something before it’s published.”

  
  



End file.
